Falling for you

‘But this time it’s serious,’ Esme Calloway went on, ‘and Pauline is aware of this. All we can do now is to keep her as comfortable as possible.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘One more thing,’ said Mrs Calloway. ‘She’s concerned about her other son. He’s in Australia, I believe.’

Kerr shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. He could be anywhere. We haven’t seen him in years.’

‘So I gathered.’ Mrs Calloway rose from behind her mahogany desk, to indicate that the interview was at an end. ‘Well, I’m just letting you know.’

‘Not long to go now,’ said Pauline McKinnon, putting it rather more bluntly than Mrs Calloway.

‘Few more weeks and that’ll be it. Did you bring me anything?’

Kerr shook his head. She asked the same question every time she saw him and each time he shook his head, because what she wanted him to bring was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whisky. Not that she went without; his mother was known for lavishly bribing the poorly paid domestic staff to smug gle regular supplies of alcohol into the nursing home for her; it was an open secret among everyone who worked at Dartington House.

‘Oh well. Down to business.’ Pauline McKinnon ran a trembling wrinkled hand over her mouth.

Dwarfed by the armchair in which she was sitting, she looked frailer than ever and there was an unmistakable yellow tinge to her skin. ‘I need to see Den.’

Kerr shook his head. ‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘Then you have to find him. He’s my son and I need to see him again before I die.’ Vehemently Pauline said, ‘It’s important.’

Of course it was. Den had always been her favourite son, and he in turn had been devoted to his mother. Kerr hadn’t been jealous; their closeness had simply been a fact of life.

‘I’ll try,’ he said now. ‘No guarantees, but I’ll do my best.’

Pauline dug down the side of the armchair and with difficulty pulled out a silver flask. Her bony fingers shook as she unscrewed the top, raised the flask to her pursed lips and took a gulp.

‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she told Kerr coldly. ‘Why shouldn’t I have a drink if I want to?’

‘It’s your life.’ He rose to leave, keen to be out of this stuffy overheated room, thick with lavender air-freshener and alcohol fumes.

‘Just find him,’ his mother said brusquely. Fumbling for a tissue up her sleeve, her eyes unexpectedly swam with tears. ‘Please. Find my boy before it’s too late.’

Chapter 35

Back at the office, Kerr dealt with a stream of phone calls before turning, without much hope, to his computer. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to track down Den; his last unsuccessful attempt had been just before Christmas.

Dennis McKinnon. He typed the name into a worldwide search engine and scrolled through the list of matches, most of them familiar to him from previous searches, none of them his brother. Kerr knew; he’d checked out each and every one.

There were two new entries, the first a seventy-six-year-old man from Louisiana. The second sounded fractionally more feasible, a member of a brass band in Wellington, New Zealand.

Mentally crossing his fingers, Kerr clicked on to the brass band’s home page. Could this be Den?

Had he moved to New Zealand and taken up trumpetry in his spare time? Anything was possible.

Scanning the page, Kerr clicked ‘photos’ and waited for them to pop up on the screen.

The third one down on the left was a photograph of Dennis McKinnon playing his trumpet. Black, bald and in his fifties, he looked like Louis Armstrong. Oh well.

Kerr exhaled wearily and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his hands over his face. Everything that had happened was starting to catch up with him. Sleeping had never been a problem before, but these days it was beyond him. Tormented by wakefulness, he was unable to stop himself thinking of Maddy. When he did finally manage to doze off, he dreamed about her but the dreams never ended happily and when he woke he felt worse than ever. More exhausted too, which made it a struggle to come into work.

Forcing himself to get a grip, Kerr sat up again and opened his eyes. Life went on because it had to go on, but it wasn’t easy pretending everything was fine. His mother was dying, his brother was unreachable and he missed Maddy terribly, more than words could

‘Kerr? Catch.’ The door swung open and Sara, the receptionist, lobbed a cellophane-wrapped sandwich through the air at him.

Kerr caught it and looked at the label.

‘It’s egg and lettuce. I didn’t ask for egg and lettuce.’ More to the point, how could anyone in their right mind possibly want egg and lettuce?

‘Yeah, well, too bad, none of us got what we asked for Sara’s tone was as pointed as her pink Faith stilettos. ‘But we just have to make the best of it, don’t we?’

The Happy Hamper was supplying their sandwiches now, and happiness was in short supply. Aware that his staff all blamed him and were becoming increasingly mutinous, Kerr said, ‘OK, but they’re better than Blunkett’s.’

‘And that’s supposed to cheer us up? They’re not a millionth as good as the Peach Tree.’ Sara was looking as if she might be on the verge of stamping her pointy-toed foot. ‘The thing is, Kerr, we’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t know what happened between you and Maddy, but the rest of us liked her a lot, we liked her sandwiches even more, and we really don’t see why we should have to miss out just because you two have had some stupid little falling out.’

A stupid little falling out. If only that was all it was.

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Sara said accusingly, ‘the accountants from the first floor aren’t happy about it either.’